I could easily be wrong, but I have a suspicion Michelin ratings don’t mean quite as much as they used to. I see plenty of restaurants with the sticker in the window, right next to the Yelp and foursquare stickers. Pre-internet I heard people talk about it like it was a valuable resource, but these days it looks like it’s just another review option alongside all the others.
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One day I was in a road-kill restaurant, and ordered their Lapin sous Michelin.
When the waiter brought it to the table, I stopped him because the tread wasn’t right.
“Yes sir, I’m afraid we had to substitute a domestic, but it is a Goodyear.”
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I think I saw that movie on Hallmark.
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This delicious pun suits my taste.
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Aside from footfall (which it can still influence significantly, as this anecdote proves), Michelin ratings can still make or break a chef’s career. I’m sure you can still have a good life, as a restaurateur, by ignoring them; but then again, you always could.
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tread wasn’t right
that’s why i go for tougher bits like rump mostly in the winter - really need studded rubber to grind that into submission
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we’re french and we do as we like
As long as you keep pissing off the English we’re good
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A Michelin star is a far more rarefied level than a mere recommendation. The decals you’re seeing are something like this:
Restaurants that get Michelin stars don’t put stickers in their windows. That would be tacky.
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Oh you… 
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Still not the actual reason why it’s masculine. It’s simply because: “Le [café / restaurant] Bouche à Oreille”.
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My theory: What noun does “le” refer to?
In “le bouche à oreillle”, it’s not la bouche, but the whole phrase “bouche à oreille”. And that has been assigned the usual default gender for something abstract like that.
After all, it’s not about some mouth, but the act/event of things going “from mouth to ear”, or, in short, the mouth-to-ear.
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Oh I’m well aware of the history. Thing is I’m also well aware of the history of dozens of identical guides in the US and Europe around the same time. None of which still exist. And none of which have become the marker of culinary greatness world wide. A Michelin star can double or triple your business. A Michelin star can make your reputation as a chef. Working in Michelin starred kitchen just about doubles your potential earnings as a cook, at every subsequent kitchen you work in. A Michelin Star gets you on TV.
Noone is lining up to go to places recommended in the Shell Guide (which wasn’t just the UK IIRC). Even shit like Zagat is kind of a shrug. But here you have a promo for a tire company. That has spun off into one of the two most important awards in the food business.
Its very French. We’ll print a restaurant guide as an advertisement for our tires! But its gonna be the most serious ass restaurant guide ever.
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Exactly. The Guides were successful because of the quality of their reportage and their maps. But it wasn’t just a promo for a tyre company, that’s the point. The idea was to get people covering more miles; it didn’t even matter if they weren’t using Michelin, it was a case of rising tide and boats.
Hence the “vaut le détour” and “vaut le voyage”; they were encouraging you to wear out your tyres faster, without it being a hard sell which would put off the suspicious French. It’s an object lesson in how to do it properly.
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I was pretty sure (above) it was a dropped word explanation, yours makes the most sense.
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Sure.
But fact remains. The thousands of similar guides. And even those with similar quality and approach. Worldwide. Ceased to exist.
Where as the major French one. Is now so important in the food/bev world that some people protest it as fussy and out dated. That shit is the Oscar for food. While its entire genre of marketing based travel guides is extinct. Hell even the major food/restaurant rating guides that were founded as rating guides (rather than ads) have mostly vanished.
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I don’t have any of his works handy at the moment but I remember James Thurber reviewed the Michelin Guide at least once and seemed amused that they included some U.S. restaurants that were either incorrectly named or possibly didn’t even exist.
Of course fact-checking and updating in those days was a little tougher than it is now.
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Certainly the provenance of the guide, at that particular moment in time, played to their advance. It’s a bit like, there are a zillion websites reviewing apps and computers in 2017, but what is top of the list? Techcrunch, from California, because surely them Silicon Valley playa know apps and computers better than anyone else. Back when food guides started, France was the SV of food - they set the bar, the culture and the rules everyone else had to play by.
I guess the Michelin Guide story is both about finding new ways to give customers reasons to buy more of your product, and about leveraging your cultural milieu to achieve your objectives.
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Think of it this way:. What better plan to get people to drive all over the countryside wearing out tires than giving them reasons to do so?
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Oh, most of that is because their guys are trained as hell and have strict rules. They can only dine alone, for example, so the company doesn’t affect how they feel about the food. I can’t think of another review company that even takes that basic step.
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